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Monday, January 27, 2014

Freedom at Midnight: The Pakistan Radio Story

Freedom at Midnight, is the title of a
book researched and written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre and it
tells the story of the partition of India into the two heavily populated
countries, India and Pakistan. This
book, with its meticulously detailed and factual information, presents the
story of partition at midnight between Thursday August 14 and Friday August
15 in the year 1947.

This
critical occasion ended the rule of the British Raj in India, and it provided
independence for two nations; the ancient and historic India now in its new
form as the Union of India, and the equally ancient though very new Dominion of
Pakistan with its two territories, West & East Pakistan.

Back
in 1947, in West Pakistan as it was or just Pakistan as it is now, there were
only two radio broadcasting stations on the air: VUL Lahore with 5 kW on 1086
kHz and VUP in Peshawar with 10 kW on 1500 kHz.
However, in addition, three more clandestine stations were on the air;
in Karachi, Peshawar, and in the border area between the two countries. This is the radio story for today here in the
AWR DX program Wavescan, and we take these stations in chronological
order.

Back
about one and a half years before the epic events of Freedom at Midnight, there was a man
from Pilibhit up near the border with Nepal, by the name of Tahir Husain. He owned a radio shop in Delhi. He agreed to assemble a radio transmitter
together with a power supply and this radio broadcasting equipment was smuggled
in three large fruit baskets into a house in Peshawar occupied by Sardar Abdur
Rab.

On
April 24, 1946, this new clandestine radio broadcasting station was activated
in the 70 metre band (4285 kHz) in another home in Peshawar. The programming that was broadcast over this
mini radio station was intended to influence the vote in a coming local
political election. The station was
moved several times within Peshawar in order to avoid detection, and its short
life span ended when the elections were over shortly afterwards.

More
than a year later, another unusual radio station was inaugurated in Karachi in
anticipation of the official recognition of the new Pakistan, in Freedom at
Midnight. This semi-official
semi-clandestine station was set up in Karachi with the approval of personnel
serving in the government of the Sind Province.

The
transmitter for this temporary radio station was assembled from equipment
procured from junk shops in Karachi and it was installed in the Ack Ack army
barracks at Malir on the eastern edge of Karachi. The first test broadcast from this new and
temporary radio station took place on August 5, 1947, a little over a week in
advance of the critical Partition Day.

Five
days later, this station launched into a schedule of regular broadcasting. Then, on August 14 and 15, the station
presented a series of broadcasts in honor of Independence Day with live
programming made up of official speeches, commentaries and music.

Ten
days later again, the station was closed.
This temporary semi-official semi-clandestine station that was
established illegally in Karachi during the last few days of authority under
the Indian government was now declared illegal under the new government of
Pakistan. It was no more.

On
Thursday August 14, the All India Radio station A. I. R. VUL in Lahore with 5
kW on 1086 kHz was on the air with its regular slew of normal programming. At 11:00 pm on that fateful night, announcer
Zahur Azar made his final station announcement under All India Radio.

Then
exactly at midnight, he played the new identification signal for the new
Pakistan Broadcasting Service. This same
announcer, Zahur Azar, then gave the opening identification announcement for
the Pakistan Broadcasting Service Lahore, a station with no official call
letters at the time. The opening
announcement in English was followed by a similar announcement in Urdu, the now
official language of Pakistan, by Mustafa Ali Hamadani.

Similar
transition programming took place at the AIR relay station VUP in Peshawar,
with its 10 kW on 1500 kHz. Soon after
11:00 pm on August 14, Yunus Sethi made the final announcement on behalf of All
India Radio. Soon after midnight, the
opening announcement on behalf of the Pakistan Broadcasting Service was made in
the Urdu language by Aftab Ahmad Bismil and this was followed by a similar
announcement in the Pushto language by Abdullah Jan Maghmoom.

Quite
soon after Partition, Pakistan and India entered into an armed conflict over
the Princely State of Kashmir, and as part of the Pakistani war of words, a
mobile shortwave station was quickly assembled and inaugurated. An old World War II communication transmitter
at one-half kW was procured from a junk dealer, repaired, and installed with other
equipment onto an army truck. A second
truck carried the power generator.

This
mobile shortwave broadcasting station, installed into two trucks that were
previously Indian army vehicles, made its first test broadcasts on a tropical
shortwave channel on April 10, 1948. A
schedule of regular programming began almost a week later, on April 16.

Radio
AKR, Azad Kashmir Radio, meaning Free Kashmir, moved around at times in the
edges of Kashmir to avoid detection, and soon afterwards it was lodged behind a
grove of pine trees at Trarkhel, a small village some 25 miles from the
border. The small village of Trarkhel,
as it was at the time, was a temporary capital for Pakistani Azad Kashmir. A temporary room was built at this isolated
country location into which the studio equipment was transferred.

The one-half kW tropical band shortwave transmitter of AKR Radio was heard with a clear
signal in Peshawar, Lahore and Srinagar, and reception reports were received
from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kenya. In
July, the Indian forces bombarded AKR Trarkhel, but without inflicting any real
damage.

During
the following year, a set of more professional equipment was obtained, the
location for the same old original one-half kW tropical shortwave transmitter was
changed, and AKR Trarkhel was re-dubbed Rawalpindi 3. At the beginning of the following year 1949,
Pakistan was allocated radio callsigns within the range APA - ASZ. Thus it was that the original VUL Lahore
became APL, and VUP Peshawar became APP.
New callsigns were given also to Karachi, APK, and to Rawalpindi, APR.

The
information in this opening feature in Wavescan today was assembled from many
different sources in many different countries, including from the new book, A
History of Radio Pakistan, researched and written by Nihal Ahmad and published
by Oxford University Press.